HTR-PM: Nuclear-Heated Gas Producing Superheated Steam

The first HTR-PM (High Temperature Reactor – Pebble Module), one of the more intriguing nuclear plant designs, is currently under construction on the coast of the Shidao Bay near Weihai, China.

This system uses evolutionary engineering design principles that give it a high probability of success, assuming that the developers and financial supporters maintain their steady progress. Considering the fact that the plant is a logical follow-on to a successful prototype that has been operating since 2000 and that it is being developed by long-term thinking Chinese engineering and constructors there does not appear to be much development risk. Since the project appears to have the solid backing of the Chinese government, there does not appear to be much risk of sudden funding removal.

It does a good job of describing the technical foundations of the plant design and the reasons why the system is considered to have a high degree of inherent safety.

In basic layout, the power plant will share a number of features with the second stage of a modern combined cycle power plant. In a combined cycle power plant, the exhaust gases from combustion turbines are directed to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG).

Those combustion product gases enter the HRSG at a temperature somewhere close to 750 C and leave that HRSG at a temperature of about 250 C. On the other side of the HRSG heat transfer tubes, feed water enters and boils, leaving the HRSG as superheated steam with a temperature somewhere close to 565 C and a pressure of 13-15 MPa. In most cases, the steam output of two or more gas turbine/HRSG modules is combined to drive a single steam turbine train, which might include both a high pressure and a low pressure turbine.

Interestingly enough, those are the same conditions produced in the HTR-PM.

For the demonstration plant, two reactor modules, each producing 250 MWth in a large, low power-density pebble bed reactor produce high temperature gas that enters the reactor at 250 C and leaves the reactor at 750 C. That hot gas (helium in the case of the HTR-PM) is moved by a circulator (the gas equivalent of a pump) into a steam generator that has feed water coming in and steam going out. The steam conditions are 565 C and 13.2 MPa. The output of the two steam generators is combined to drive a single 210 MWe steam turbine.

As described in the literature, this demonstration configuration was chosen to gain experience with multiple modules with the full intention of eventually producing larger output power plants by using more reactor/steam generator modules connected to larger steam turbines.

There are conceptual designs for 4, 6, 8 and even 10 reactor modules all connected to a single steam turbine. The designers are sticking with smaller power output reactors. Calculations tell them that if they keep total output power less than 300 MWth they can make a testable claim of inherent safety. No conceivable event can lead to a situation where the temperature in any part of the core exceeds the 1600 C design temperature for the TRISO particle fuel.

If no accident leads to temperatures that can cause fuel damage, there is no need to devise additional safety systems or features to remove heat.

HTR-PM Reactor Vessel and Steam Generator(via Next Big Future)

There are several evolutionary paths available based on this design advancement. One path would be to implement a phased replacement of coal fired boilers with HTR-PM reactor/steam generator modules. China has a large and rapidly growing inventory of modern steam plants that currently require burning about 3.5 billion tons of coal per year, resulting in places where the air is almost too foul to breathe.

Moving all of that coal from the source to the power plant is also a major burden on the country’s straining rail and barge transportation network. Replacing coal boilers with nuclear heat sources would eliminate the main drawbacks of the power plants while fully using the rest of the installed infrastructure of cooling water, steam plant, transmission lines, and trained operators/maintenance staffs.

Another direction available is to gradually increase the temperature capability of the pebble bed to the point where the gas is hot enough to drive a direct cycle gas turbine whose exhaust can then be directed to the steam generator for a higher efficiency, higher power output combined cycle system.

The Chinese purchased their initial TRISO fuel manufacturing capability from the Germans and their designs have a great deal in common with the HTR program being pursued in Germany up until the end of the 1980s. In that program, demonstrated gas temperatures reached 950 C with future plans of hitting 1100 or 1200 C as the manufacturing techniques improved.

As demonstrated in the German program, TRISO fuel particles do not have to be UO2, a wide variety of actinide compounds including UC, PuO2, and ThO2 have been tested and are available for future use.

One of the things that I find incredibly invigorating about nuclear technology is the almost endless horizons and options for creatively using energy dense, ultra-low emission fuel sources to create useful heat that does not require wholesale reengineering of our basic infrastructure. We can reuse a large portion of what we have already built and already learned how to effectively operate and maintain.

Rod Adams gained his nuclear knowledge as a submarine engineer officer and as the founder of a company that tried to develop a market for small, modular reactors from 1993-1999. He began publishing Atomic Insights in 1995 and began producing The Atomic Show Podcast in March 2006. Following his Navy career and a three year stint with an SMR design project (B&W mPower), he turned Atomic Insights into an LLC and began devoting his full efforts to publishing, writing, and producing.

Looks like the Chinese will be the champions of new nuclear technologies.

USA has shale gas and EU is currently engaged with renewables. Both have their downsides: shale gas will run out ( and it does emit CO2) and renewables on large scale require that energy markets as we know them will be demolished and redesigned to fit zero marginal cost generation and renewable backup (see Agora Energiewende papers).

As with other high temperature reactors, the HTR-PM will operate with around 50% higher thermal-to-electric efficiency compared to light water reactors. This means it will reduce by almost 2x the amount of waste heat produced, and therefore proportionately reduce use of cooling water, as well are reducing the cost-penalty for fully air-cooled designs (this will be great for non-coastal locations). It also means the reactor is well suited for co-generation of electricity and process heat.

Coming quickly on the tails of these helium cooled reactors is another technology that evolves the TRISO fuel concept even further: the Fluoride salt-cooled High-temperature Reactors (FHR).

As described here, the FHR family of reactors will use the same robust TRISO fuel form as the helium cooled HTR, but will use superior performing liquid salt coolant to boost power output and greatly reduce coolant pressure, which is expected to produce a much more cost effective and safer design. This concept was pioneered in the US, but China currently is funding it more agressively, and plans to have a 2 MWt test reactor on-line in 2017.

Nicely said Rod. These are exactly the sentiments and views that I have.

As you implied, a Fukushima style accident cannot happen with this design, the TRISO spheres can’t meltdown nor breakdown at the temperatures that the system can reach, and it traps all radioactive products inside itself.

There is also no water in the core, meaning there is no ability to create steam or hydrogen explosions as happened in Fukushima.

Again, as you inferred there is no need to build a “supergrid”. A nuke plant can serve as a direct plugin replacement for Coal and Natural gas (which does produce CO2) plants.

Nuclear Power is the future of human energy whether on mother earth or as we eventually expand into outer space.

Especially if we then also develope PV-materials for the walls of the fusion chamber that convert the high energy radiation of the fusion process directly into electricity. Just like PC-panels now do with solar radiation. It avoids the cumbersome (expensive) steamturbine-dynamo combination.

And then succeed in reducing the size of the fusion chamber, so those fusion plants with little moving parts (low maintenance) can be installed everywhere.*)

—*) With present technology ITER is probably still to small to become a productive electricity plant. So the next generation needs more advanced materials and/or to be bigger in order to deliver real big power.

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NNadir

June 30, 2014 15:33

One of the interesting things that the Chinese have been exploring for these high temperature reactors is the use of thermochemical hydrogen cycles for water splitting in order to produce industry. My last look into their program – it goes back a few years – suggests that they were still looking at the “SI” (Sulfur Iodine) cycle, although my personal view is that there are many probably easier cycles to use.

I’m not a TRISO kind of guy, myself, but I certainly think that this type of reactor has much to recommend it and I wish China success on it’s plan to engage a serious fight against climate change by building a fleet of variable reactors.

People may be interested to know that Dr. Per Peterson at UC Berkeley is working on a molten salt fueled TRISO type reactor. However he has had little support in the US because of the gas anesthesia by which we conduct what we call “energy policy” and, if I have this right, has been working closely with the Chinese.